Lisel Liblichlein had come from the country to the city because she
wanted to become an actress. At home she found everything stuffy,
narrow, stultifying. The gentlemen were stupid. The sky, the kisses,
the girl friends, the Sunday afternoons became unbearable. The most
she could do was cry. To her, becoming an actress would mean: to be
clever, free, and happy. What that meant, she did not know. She had
no way to determine whether she had talent.
She adored her cousin Schulz, because he lived in the city and wrote
poems. When the cousin wrote once that he was tired of law and would
live in accordance with his inclination to be a writer, she informed
her shocked parents that she was fed up with the restricted life; she
would pursue her ideals as an actress. They tried in every way to
dissuade her from this plan, to no avail. She became more determined,
and even made threats. They yielded reluctantly, went with her to
the city, rented a small room in a large pension, enrolled her in an
inexpensive acting school. Cousin Schulz was asked to look after her.
Mr. Schulz frequently was in the company of Cousin Liblichlein. He
took her to cabarets, read poetry, showed here his Bohemian digs,
introduced her to the literary cafe Kloesschen, went with her
hand-in-hand for hours through the streets at night, touched her,
kissed her. Miss Liblichlein was pleasantly dazed by all the new
things; soon it occurred to her that most of what she saw was not as
beautiful as she had once imagined. Right from the start she was
irritated that the director of the theater, the collegues, the
literati of the Cafe Kloesschen--all the people with whom she often
came in contact, found pleasure in touching her, caressing her hands,
pressing their knees against hers, looking directly at her without
shame. Even being touched by Schulz became burdensome to her.
To avoid hurting his feelings, as well as to avoid seeming provincial,
she seldom showed her discomfort. But once she struck him
vigorously on the face. They were in his room; he had just explained
the last lines of his poem, "Weariness." They were
The evening stands before my window, grey man!
It would be best if we went to sleep-Then he tried to remove her
blouse. Schulz was utterly stunned by the blow. He said, almost
weeping, that she must have noticed that he loved her. Moreover, he
was her cousin. She said that she didn't like someone opening her
blouse. Besides, he had torn off a button. He said that he could no
longer stand it. If one loved someone, one must yield to him. He
would try to lose himself with other women. She did not know what to
answer. Groaning, he thought: Oh, oh. She sat next to him
dejectedly.
For the next few days he was nowhere to be seen. When he returned,
he was pale and grey. His bloodless red eyes lay tearfully in grimy
shadows. His voice had only a sing-song tone, with a mannered
melancholy. Schulz spoke mournfully, dreamily, about despair,
whoredom, and being torn apart inwardly. He said that he was fed up
with the joy of life, that he would soon catch up with his own death.
He avoided showing signs of tender feelings, but he often sighed
painfully. He flirted theatrically with a longing for dying. He
brought his friend to corpse-strewn tragedies, to gloomy film-dramas,
to serious concerts in darkened halls.
Perhaps a week had gone by. A woman had sung. The hands of the
listeners applauded loudly and long. Gottschalk Schulz passionately
grasped Lisel Lilichlein's fingers, laid them gently on one of his
thighs, and said: "Isn't it strange how a woman's song grips the soul!"
Then he again began to speak imploringly and tearfully of love and
yielding. Lisel Liblichlein said that this was boring or disgusting
to her. Out of pity--and because she wanted to go up--she finally
declared that she would agree to the love if he would give up the
business of surrender. Schulz happily pressed her to himself. He
stood there dreaming for a long time. He sang: "O tears. O goodness.
O God. O beauty. O love. O love. O love..." He dashed through
the streets. He had disappeared into the Cafe Kloesschen. But Lisel
Liblichlein sat in her small room, awkwardly smiling under a reddish
tallow lamp. She did not understand these city people, who seemed to
her strange, dangerous animals. She felt abandoned and more alone
than before. She thought with longing about her innocent homeland:
about the breezy sky, about the laughing young gentlemen, about
tennis matches, and she felt nostalgia for the Sunday afternoons--she
took off her garters, placed her little bodice on a chair. She was
inconsolable.